Soil-free cultivation processes for plants are already known using bags in which a chosen substratum is enclosed which can be enriched by nutrient solutions. Soil-free cultivation enables improved control of plant growth and quality, and simplifies handling and packing. Traditional soil-free cultivation in prefabricated bags entails substantial production costs.
It has further already been proposed in patent document FR-A-2 372 589 to produce industrially grass carpets which are produced out of the soil on plastics films which are sealing tight at the roots and which can then be removed from the plastics films, the roots of the grass themselves forming, with the substratum, a natural tissue which ensures the mechanical behavior of the grass carpet.
Plants with scarcely branched root systems such as aromatic plants or plants which have to be cultivated so as to be spaced apart and marketed young such as flowers or tomato plants for instance, do not provide, as does lawn, a carpet sufficiently solid to be handled with ease. Further, producing customized plants does not allow a full mixture containing compost and seeds to be spread directly. The process for cultivating grass in the form of carpets cannot therefore be directly applied to soil-free cultivation of various plants likely to be marketed.